Common CI/CD Anti-Patterns (and How to Fix Them)

Most engineering teams claim to practice CI/CD but have instead automated the form without adopting the discipline. This article names the most common structural anti-patterns that corrupt CI/CD pipelines — turning them into slow, untrustworthy, or cosmetic processes — and provides evidence-backed remedies for each. The target reader is a mid-to-senior engineer or engineering lead who has inherited or built a pipeline they suspect is lying to them.